A design studio of the future shall be based on dislocated, distributed design services, and feature the 'design by collaboration' enabled by the computer transmitted information. However, in a collaborative design process, computer may take an additional role, i.e., as an "ultimately structured dynamic communication medium ... based on the notion of commitment and interpretation" (Winograd and Flores 1987) . Various models of 'intelligent' design systems based on the ideas of 'open,

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... , artificial intelligence systems' have shown that the computer-based design agents which act on the object-to-bedesigned model could be involved in a "conversation for action" (Winograd and Flores, Ibid.). The aim of the paper is to illustrate a computer-based design system that enables 'a-kind-of' conversations by the design agents before the design decisions were made. After the description of a design experiment and the conversation that went on between the design agents, the traits of the applied 'design design system' are discussed.